Wednesday, May 18, 2011

When They're Gone: A Farewell To Crazies

I'm really excited for the Rapture. All the hustle and bustle of Christian life will soon be quelled by the Almighty exhuming his professed followers from Earth to Heaven, leaving all the rest to suffer through war, famine, fire, brimstone, etc. You know, the usual.

If you're not familiar with the latest internet craze crazy person doomsday sayer, you can check out some information here. For the short version, this guy has calculated that the Rapture will occur this Saturday, May 21. At precisely 6 p.m. Local time. Whether that's affected by daylight savings time is still unclear.

If you're note sure what all this particular Rapture will involve, or which 200 million people will be summoned to His side, the San Francisco Chronicle has provided a handy-dandy FAQ for you.

So why is this happening now? Cliff's notes: because the world was submerged under water and all life eliminated exactly 7000 years ago on May 21. Obviously. Oh, and Gays. You mustn't forget The Gays.

To all my Christian friends, I just want to say farewell and it's been nice knowing you. I've been furiously reading the Left Behind books (you may need to try the link a few times, it's a bit overwhelmed with everyone trying to cheat and read the abbreviated version), watching the movie and playing the video games just so I can understand what will come of me in the months leading up to the October 21 obliteration of the world. I do wish we could get one more Halloween in, but I understand there's a celestial time line that must be adhered to. Also, according to the video game, you will be able to drop literal prayer bombs on my head that strike with the power of a nuclear warhead. Now that's gonna hurt, but I gotta say that's pretty damn awesome, so good on ya for that!

To the rest of us heathens, I'm looking forward to actually getting some meaningful legislation passed in Congress. Once the Rapture occurs, we can pass all those pro-gay bills that supposedly discriminate against Christians. After all, you can't discriminate against a class of people that don't exist anymore, right?

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Discovering Fran Lebowitz

I came across a Martin Scorsese documentary about Fran Lebowitz last night on HBO called Public Speaking and it raised a few questions for me.

First: Why was I familiar with the name but none of her work? I've known the name Fran Lebowitz for quite some time, but only knew it as one of those names I should know to seem like I'm in tune with culture.

Turns out she is (was, really) an essayist and a writer for a few magazines, was part of Andy Warhol's entourage, and has since been a public speaker doing college tours and other venues where people pay her to tell them her opinion. Or, to put it another way, someone who worked for a time, put out great material, and then proceeded to simply exist. Awesome!

Second: Why is she so right? Part of her shtick is that she is always right. She talks about it in the movie as well. That sounds absurd just hearing it, but after watching the documentary, I've come to the conclusion that she's pretty much correct.

For example, this quip from the movie: "writers have to know things." This is in reference to how writing is inherently a different form of art from the others, in that to paint one just needs a pretty landscape, a brush and some paint, or to act one just needs to regurgitate lines in front of an audience. But to write, one must know something worth writing about.

This ties in to her belief that there are just too many writers and that the things we chose to write about are pretty much worthless. Funnily enough, I agree… but that's not going to stop me from writing here anyway!

I plan on picking up her two published essay collections, even if they are 30+ years old at this point, because I'm going to guess that they are packed full of snarky wisdom, and I need that right about now in my life.

If you happen to see Public Speaking on HBO or Netflix or wherever, I'd definitely give it a watch. With a natural born opinionated talker being filmed by an amazing director, the movie turned out to be very interesting even without knowing much about Fran Lebowitz before hand.